In my last post I discussed rotation modifications for dealing with Berserk in 4.1. In so doing, I also touched on the relative performance of the Glyph of Tiger’s Fury (GoTF) and the Glyph of Berserk(GoB) on different fights. As often happens, a fair amount of the commentary by people on that post has been on the relative value of the glyphs rather than on the changes to the rotation with Berserk no longer being on the GCD. Rather than continue to discuss the glyphs on that post, I decided to toss up this post as a place to begin a more in-depth discussion of GoTF and GoB. The tricky part about comparing GoB with GoTF is that either can be better depending on the fight mechanics and fight length. GoB is particularly sensitive to fight length due to the three minute cooldown and GoTF is particularly impacted on a fight like Atramedes where the repeating air phases are 31.5 seconds with no chance to cast TF while the GoB cooldown continues to tick down.

My feeling is that the choice of whether to use GoB or GoTF is dependent on both fight mechanics and raid needs. GoTF will provide more overall dps on fights where there is no interruption on attacks (Chimaeron is a good example) but GoB will provide more burst dps (which is also applicable to Chimaeron where burst is important in phase 3). It really depends on the role one is playing in the fight.

My goal of this post is not to say which glyph is better, but rather to help people gain some insight into how fight mechanics and fight length affect each of the glyphs. Atremedes is a really interesting fight to show that on due to the periodic air phases. Per DBM the timing in Atramedes is:

Initial 90 second ground phase

31.5 second air phase

85 second ground phase

31.5 second air phase

repeat the 85/31.5 second pattern until either Atremedes is dead or the enrage timer is hit

A couple of things to keep in mind. The dps script has not been optimized for this fight. It will try to cast Berserk as early and often as possible with the constraint that it will try not to delay the next TF. To optimize the script for this fight, there are likely times where it would be better to cast Berserk at a point where it will delay TF in order to get as much Berserk time as possible before the next air phase. Additionally, it is difficult to know what to set the Blood in the Water timing to so I am leaving it at 25% – which really impacts dps when Atramedes dies during or right after an air phase. I am going to test a series of fights that use the same profile, for both the GoB and the GoTF with the fight length increasing in 30 second intervals from 5:00 to 8:30. The setup I am using is a balanced stats profile – Weapon DPS: 703.5, Strength: 142, Agility: 5118, AttackPower: 887, Haste Rating: 936, Hit rating: 604, Crit Rating: 954, Expertise Rating: 188, and Mastery rating: 1987 (this is an ilvl 362 setup). The testing is based on the 4.1 Berserk along with the Berserk changes I covered in my last post.

So what does the data below tell us? First off, you should use GoB on Atramedes. At 6:30 and 7:00 you can see the impact of the Berserk logic waiting for TF to come off of cooldown resulting in Berserk being clipped when using the GoTF. Putting in some additional fight specific logic to minimize clipping of Berserk right before an air phase, I just got 19347 dps, 12.3 TFs, and 2.9 Berserks for the 6:30 GoTF fight and 19606 dps, 13.5 TFs and 2.9 Berserks for the 7:00 minute GoTF fight – so pushing off a TF in order to avoid clipping a Berserk can be a small dps up – but it is not that significant. Notice that the dps difference between GoTF and GoB goes from a low of 23dps on the 5:00 fights to a high of 292dps on the 7:00 fights which is a pretty big swing. You can see how much fight length and mechanics affect dps – which has a high of 20273 on the 5:00 GoB fight to a low of 18126 on the 8:00 GoTF fight.

Sometime soon, I will do a followup post comparing the two glyphs on a patchwork style fight at different fight lengths. That will favor GoTF and will further illustrate how fight length and mechanics affect TF, Berserk, overall dps and the choice of which glyph to use, GoTF or GoB.